CHAPTER XIII: SHOTS IN THE NIGHT
The three cowboys rode to Lobo Wells, where Len made his few purchases, while Hashknife and Sleepy stabled their horses, and they met again at the Oasis. Johnny Harris and Archie Moon were in from the JP ranch, and Len introduced them to Hashknife and Sleepy.
The Oasis was busy that night. Harry Cole nodded coldly to them, as he went past them and entered his private room at the rear of the building. Johnny and Archie wanted to play pool; so they made it a three-handed game with Sleepy. After taking one drink, Len said he was going back to the ranch, and urged Hashknife to come out soon.
Breezy Hill dropped in for a few minutes, and Hashknife went back to the office with him.
“Somebody said that Len was in town,” said Breezy, after Hashknife had spoken about being out at the Box S. “Charley Prentice was around here early this evenin’, half drunk and half loco. I dunno whether he’s got a gun or not, but a man in his condition ain’t safe—not after what he tried to do to Len the other night.”
“Fit to be locked up,” agreed Hashknife. “Is he home now?”
“I think he is. I was up past his house a while ago, but everything was quiet. I kinda worry about that kid.”
And the kid, as Breezy termed him, was also worried. He and Minnie, the squaw, stayed close to the kitchen, while Prentice sprawled on a couch in the little living-room, talking to himself at intervals.
“We go ’way pretty soon,” decided Minnie. “No good stay here. Worse all time.”
“But where’ll we go, Minnie?” asked Larry anxiously.
“I dunno.”
Larry humped in a chair, resting his chin on his two hands. “I guess we’ll git along,” he decided. “Mebby I can git a job, Minnie.”
The fat, stoical face of the squaw did not change expression, as she said: “Sure.”
Suddenly there came a sharp knock on the front door; a rat, tat, tat, as though some one struck the door with a hard object. They heard Prentice growl angrily and the couch creaked protestingly, as he heaved himself upright. Larry stepped to the doorway and watched Prentice pick up a gun from the table and go lurching toward the door. He fumbled for the knob, found it and yanked the door open.
Surging ahead he hooked the point of his left shoulder against the side of the doorway and stopped suddenly.
“This is Ayres, you dirty dog!” snapped a voice, and the next instant a gun spat fire twice from beside the little porch, while the echoes rattled back from the frame buildings across the street. Came the crash of a body falling on the porch—silence. Larry turned, white-faced, white-eyed, and stared at the squaw, whose lips were tightly shut, her eyes dilated a little.
Slowly she walked past Larry and went out to the porch. Larry didn’t follow her, but his wide eyes were glued on the front door, until she came back, softly closing the door behind her.
“Plenty dead,” she said slowly.
“Dead?” whispered Larry, almost choking over the word.
“Shot twice,” she said, nodding. “Die quick.”
“We—we ought to get the doctor,” faltered Larry.
“Doctor no good now; better get sheriff.”
The sheriff! Larry blinked painfully. What would he tell the sheriff? What could he tell the sheriff? Tell him what they had heard? He wanted to cry, but fought down the impulse. He came over close to the squaw and she looked queerly at him.
“Minnie,” he said, “you didn’t hear anythin’, didja?”
She stared at him for a moment. Then:
“White man law,” she said.
“White man law, Minnie?”
“One man kill—one man hang.”
“Oh! Minnie, you mean they’d hang—him?”
“White man law hang him sure.”
“You would tell ’em, Minnie?”
She looked at him for several moments, her round face as blank of expression as the wall behind her. Finally she spoke.
“Minnie not white man; Minnie Injun.”
“You won’t tell, Minnie?”
“You go tell sheriff; Minnie hear nothing.”
Without another word he bolted from the rear of the house and went running toward the street. The sound of the shots had been heard by a number of people, but as there had been no further disturbance they decided that some cowboy was merely working off some extra steam by shooting holes in the sky.
Hashknife and Breezy did not hear the shots, and were unprepared for the entrance of little Larry, choking for breath, as he stumbled into the sheriff’s office. Breathlessly he blurted out his story of the killing.
“Yuh say he’s dead?” asked Breezy. “Sure he’s dead, Larry?”
“I didn’t look,” panted Larry. “Minnie said he was.”
“Take it easy, son,” advised Hashknife calmly. “You say that somebody knocked on the door, and when Prentice went to the door this somebody shot him twice?”
Larry nodded quickly.
“Not a word spoken?” asked Hashknife.
“We—we didn’t hear nothin’.”
Ben Dillon was just coming from the Oasis as they went past, and he joined them. He had heard the two shots, but did not know just where they had been fired.
They found Charley Prentice sprawled on the little front porch, one arm dangling over the edge, lying on top of his own revolver. They secured a lamp from Minnie, placed it on a chair, so that the body was illuminated, and Breezy went after the doctor, who was county coroner. The sheriff questioned Minnie, and her story, told in monosyllables, was practically the same as Larry had told.
The coroner came and they examined the body. He had been hit twice, and either bullet would have killed him. No one offered any suggestions as to who might have killed Prentice, except Breezy’s remark: “I guess he was plumb scared to death that Len⸺” And then Breezy ended his remark with, “I didn’t think how that sounded.”
Hashknife was watching little Larry’s face in the lamplight, and he saw the little fellow look sharply at the squaw, who merely looked back at him with a blank stare. The boy sighed deeply and moistened his dry lips with his tongue.
They placed the body on a blanket and carried it down to the doctor’s office. Hashknife looked back towards the house, where the squaw stood in the doorway, holding the lamp shoulder-high, her other arm around the shoulders of little Larry.