“Now, Beck and Scanlon run the only dens in Saragossa and at Ridgepole. Because they are all involved, your uncle must have been hooked up with gambling; and, because your uncle was hooked up with gambling, they’re all involved.”
Ducky looked dazed; with tolerable reason.
“Quinliven is involved bad and big and sure. He offered to take your cattle for the full number on the tally book. No cowman would do that. The calves on that tally are sold, lost, strayed, stolen, eaten, skinned, and gone with the wild bunch. Quinnie, he wanted to get little Ducky out of the country.
“That shooting scrape was all fake; so you wouldn’t suspect him and Banker Bennett of standin’ in. Real sincere people don’t empty their guns and not hit anybody—it ain’t respectable. But Bennett he intended to make that water hole the explanation of your bein’ found dead and promiscuous. That’s what he proposed to me.”
“Oh, goils, pinch me!”
“Baca is involved by being your uncle’s lawyer, and yet not knowing how your uncle extracted that nice little income from Saragossa County; and by being your lawyer and not finding out. And old Beck and Scanlon are involved by their conscientious scruples in not wanting the last rag off your back.”
Ducky remonstrated.
“Hi! You put that last in to make it easy—like the Englishman who always added ‘and barks like a dog’ to all his riddles, to make ’em harder. You’re throwing the long arm of coincidence out of socket. It won’t wash, my Angular-Saxon friend! You’re a good old superdreadnought and the best hand at a standing high guess I’ve ever seen—but we can’t go to court waving any wild, wet tale like that.”
“Court? Oh, Jemima! Who said court? Let Tavy Baca pick the jury and you couldn’t convict one of that push on his own written confession. The right hunch is goin’ to be the best evidence, where we settle this case—and that’s out of court.”
“Do you mean to use force?”