“We got plenty of time, Buck,” Elmer Duffy reminded him. “He can’t get away. We don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Young Shaw did tell us this before we started.”
“Rats!” Rock laughed. “You sure don’t want to be convinced, do you, Buck? You surely want to see Doc Martin dance on a rope end. Maybe you’d just as soon hang me, even if I’m not Doc. You recollect what Dave Wells named me in Fort Benton, night before last, don’t you? Well, you have Elmer Duffy say who he thinks I might be if I’m not Doc.”
“If Doc Martin is dead an’ buried,” Duffy said, “there’s only one man you can be.”
“You are right,” Rock said. “I will bet you a new hat, Walters, that Elmer Duffy names me what Dave Wells called me in Benton. I can see half a dozen riders in this crowd I worked on trail with, until we came to Clark’s Ford in Nebraska. If you want to be dead sure, Elmer, there is a sorrel horse with two white hind feet and a big star on his forehead, branded JB, and a black, branded a Bleeding Heart, grazing in the pasture back of the barn. And I could tell you more that only one man could know, Elmer. Tell Buck Walters who I am.”
“You’re Rock Holloway,” Duffy muttered.
“Bull’s-eye!” Rock said. “I have been in Montana less than three weeks. It seems a plumb exciting place. Are you satisfied, Buck? Are you still eager to hang me under the impression that I’m Doc Martin? Do you want to see his saddle, with bloodstains on it, where somebody—who also wanted to see him dead—shot him, while he rode along the river bottoms? Maybe you’d like to dig up his body, where he’s buried over by those poplars?”
“What is the use of carrying this on any longer?” Nona demanded. “I don’t believe Doc did what Alice says you claim he did. I don’t believe he was a thief. But, whether he was or was not, he is dead. This man is what he says he is. He came here the day Doc was killed. He told me his name was Rock Holloway. I hired him. That is all there is to it.”
“Isn’t that what Dave Wells called me?” Rock said to Walters. “Are you satisfied?”
“You denied it,” Walters said. “When he spoke to you, you used me to prove you were Doc Martin.”
“A man can have a joke with his friends, if he likes. It isn’t against any law that I know of. He probably told you I joined his outfit on the Yellowstone last summer and worked for him all winter.”