Something in Kent’s tone made Johnny resent this advice.
“Respect for the law?” he asked. “I’m plumb hostile to law when it gits as stupid as this. I pick up that bit of wool, and what does it mean to him? Nothin’! Well, it ought to.”
“How so?” Gallup snapped.
“There ain’t been no sheepman in here tonight. It’s wet outside. The wind ain’t blowin’ wet wool into this room. How’d that piece of fleece git here? And while I’m about it, no one has proved to me that this gent killed hisself. I could have slipped up here and bumped him off while he slept, held the gun close enough to singe hair, too. Droppin’ it on the floor as I went out wouldn’t take no brains at all.”
“What you think don’t interest me,” old Aaron said hotly. “Vin was downstairs. He’d have known if any one came up here.”
“You run along, Johnny,” Kent again urged.
“Somehow I just don’t like bein’ told to mind my own business thataway,” Johnny flared, losing his own temper. “I want to tell Doc and the rest of you that that man couldn’t have killed hisself—leastwise, not like this.”
“Couldn’t?” Doc Ritter echoed.
“That’s what I said—couldn’t! That bird was a left-handed gent. Left-handed men ain’t shootin’ themselves in the right temple! ‘By his own hand’!” Johnny repeated Gallup’s words with fine contempt. “Oh, hell! Are you fools or what? This man was murdered—shot down in cold blood!”
“Ain’t nobody but a smart aleck like you tellin’ that a dead man was left-handed,” the coroner roared.