“I tell you I can’t account for it,” Otis admitted. “I own up that it struck me all of a heap. I was as much surprised as you when I saw it. You know I never had any quarrel with Joe Fyffe. We were friends. Why should I kill him?”
“Now, just between you and me, didn’t your daddy say, like all the rest of the cow-men here, that the Gov’ment wasn’t going to collect a penny of grazing-fees, and that the ranger ought to be run out of the country?”
Otis, who had regained his color after the first shock of the discovery, paled visibly again at the Sheriff’s question. He hesitated an instant before he answered.
“Why, yes,” he retorted, “there’s no use denying that. You know as well as I that the Government rangers aren’t any too popular in the cattle country. But you admit that all the cow-men dislike the rangers. Why should that indicate any motive on my part?”
“I aint saying it does,” Ogden remarked. “I’m asking for information. Now, isn’t it true, Otis, that just because you was particularly friendly with Joe Fyffe, you thought you could talk to him better than anyone else? Wasn’t that the reason you come over here last night—not with any notion of killing him, mind you—but just to tell him he’d better clear out, before somethin’ happened?
“I’m supposin’ that you came here to do him a service—to warn him to git out before there was trouble, ’cause I know you and him was pretty good friends. Now, Otis, tell me straight—wasn’t that about the way things sized up? One word led to another. Maybe he pulled a gun on you first, and you had to do it, or get killed yourself. If you’ll say it was self-defense, now, maybe that’ll go a long ways with the jury. Between you and me, haven’t I hit it about right?”
Otis, staring at Ogden, his eyes narrowed and his lips compressed, shook his head.
“I tell you, Sheriff, I didn’t kill Joe Fyffe. How could I claim self-defense when I was fifteen miles from here all night? And if I were the one who really killed him, do you think I’d have shot him down like this, without giving him a chance?
The Sheriff shrugged and turned away.
“Remember, Otis, I’m tryin’ to help you. Of course, I can’t make you say what you don’t want to say. But if you think you’ll ever get away with an alibi defense, in the face of that writin’ on the floor and those empty cartridges in your gun—why, you’ve got another guess comin’. But a self-defense plea may get you somewheres. I’m just tryin’ to give you a tip, that’s all. It’s none of my funeral.”