Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

The sheriff chewed and teetered meditatively, his eyes on the ground. From the tail of his eye Starr watched him, secretly willing to bet that he knew what the sheriff was thinking. When O'Malley turned and strolled back to the porch, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes still on the ground as though he were weighing the matter carefully, Starr stood where he was, apparently unaware that the sheriff had moved. Starr seemed to be watching the coroner curiously, but he knew just when the sheriff passed cat-footedly behind him, and he grinned to himself.

The sheriff made one of his sudden moves, and jerked the six-shooter from its holster at Starr's hip, pulled out the cylinder pin and released the cylinder with its customary five loaded chambers and an empty one under the hammer. He tilted the gun, muzzle to him, toward the rising sun and squinted into its barrel that shone with the care it got, save where particles of dust had lodged in the bore. He held the gun close under his red nose and sniffed for the smell of oil that would betray a fresh cleaning. And Starr watched him interestedly, smiling approval.

"All right, far as you've gone," he said casually, when the sheriff was replacing the cylinder in the gun. "If you want to go a step farther, I reckon maybe I can show you where I come down off the bluff when I heard the shot, and where I went back again after my horse. And you'll see, maybe, that I couldn't shoot from the bluff and get a man around on the far side of the house. Won't take but a minute to show yuh." He gave the slight head tilt and the slight wink of one eye which, the world over, asks for a secret conference, and started off around the corner of the house.

The sheriff followed noncommittally but he kept close at Starr's heels as though he suspected that Starr meant to disappear somehow. So they reached the bluff, which Starr knew would be out of hearing from the house so long as they did not speak loudly. He pointed down at the prints of his boots where he had left the rocks of the steep hillside for the sand of the level; and he even made a print beside the clearest track to show the sheriff that he had really come down there as he climbed. But it was plain that Starr's mind was not on the matter of footprints.

"Keep on looking around here, like you was tracing up my trail," he said in a low voice, pointing downward. "I've got something I want to tell yuh, and I want you to listen close and get what I say, because I ain't apt to repeat it. And I don't want that coroner to get the notion we're talking anything over. That little play you made with my gun showed that you've got hoss sense and ain't overlooking any bets, and it may be that I'll have use for yuh before long. Now listen."

The sheriff listened, chewing industriously and wandering about while Starr talked. His hard eyes changed a little, and twice he nodded his head in assent.

"Now you do that," said Starr at last, with an air of one giving orders. "And see to it that you get a hearing as soon as possible. I can't appear except as a witness, of course, but I want a chance to size up the fellows that take the biggest interest in the trial. And keep it all on the basis of a straight quarrel, if you can. You'll have to fix that up with the prosecuting attorney, if you can trust him that far."

"I can, Mr. Starr. He's my brother-in-law, and he's the best man we could pick in the county for what you want. I get you, all right. There won't be anything drop about what you just told me."

"There better hadn't be anything drop!" Starr told him dryly. "You're into something deeper than county work now, ole-timer. This is Federal business, remember. Come on back and stall around some more, and let me go on about my own business. You can get word to me at the Palacia if you want me at the inquest, but don't get friendly. I'm just a stock-buyer that happened along. Keep it that way."

"I sure will, Mr. Starr. I'll do my part." The sheriff relapsed into his ruminative manner as he led the way back to the house. One may guess that Starr had given him something worth ruminating about.